


Heart of Gold

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Series: Orville Peck: the outtakes [2]
Category: Country Music RPF, Orville Peck - Fandom
Genre: 1860s, Alternate Universe, American Civil War, Gen, M/M, Richmond - Freeform, Underground Railway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: Behind the Mask: Richmond, Virginia 1864, and Orville Peck is spying for the Union.
Series: Orville Peck: the outtakes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709713
Kudos: 5





	Heart of Gold

It's Jeremiah who says, two years later, "Who was that masked man?"

Reuben had long since disregarded the mask. He'd had more immediate concerns, and by the time he had felt safe enough to draw breath, Peck was many stations down the line. 

"A friend," Reuben says. He is clutching the thin packet of letters, each one more precious than gold: letters he will be able to make out himself, spelling the words and tracing the sense of them and hearing the voices of the people he left behind. There is hope, and regret, and love, in these letters in the moment before he reads them. 

"I can't stay," Peck had said. "A pleasure to see you both. Reuben, you look well. Canada suits you, I think."

"Yessir," says Reuben, and grins. He takes Jeremiah's hand, in front of the cabin they built together with its solid walls and shining stove, its new-sprung bed and winter stores. "Yes," he says. "It does."

Peck's eyes are smiling behind the mask. "Freedom's always a good look on a man," he says. 

His accent is familiar, now. Peck was never a Virginia man. He was a colonial through and through, a dirty rebel, a blockade runner, a spy, a cowboy. Reuben takes a deep breath, in this new land, and he gives Peck the very best, "Yee-haw!" he can contrive.

"Reuben!" Peck says, and then he lifts his face and howls like the mad cowboy he is, "Yee-haw!" Then he says, "Thank you," and hands over the mail, and shakes Reuben's hand, and bows to Jeremiah, most gentlemanly, tipping his hat. The palomino pony he rides tilts one ear forward and one back, and raises a hoof, polite and pretty as a lady's palfrey. "Goodbye," Peck says. "Keep well."

Reuben steps back. "You too," he says.

The pony whisks her tail, Peck salutes, and then they're gone in a rattle of hooves and a jingle of well-worn harness, the fringe of Peck's mask blowing in the wind. 

Jeremiah's eyebrows tilt, in that way of his, quizzical and sweet. Reuben steals a kiss.

"So, Reuben. Who _was_ that?" Jeremiah asks.

~*~

They made acquaintance of each other in a ditch, on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia. The night was dark and the moon clouded, the ditch deep and muddy, and Reuben and Peck both were bent on illegitimate purposes. When they clashed, barely able to make out the white of each other's eyes, they were equals in apprehension.

"Massuh, I mean no harm!" Reuben said, in the whining, child's voice that had saved him from a beating more than once, hating to his core the necessity that forced him to use it.

Peck - the black shadow that would become Peck, a day later - Peck said, "I'm no-one's master." 

"Yessir," said Reuben automatically. He was stiff and sore and terrified, cold to his bones, calculating the odds of discovery - if he was betrayed at this point, could he pass off the attempt at escape as a errand? Or a search for medicine, or a quest to connect with a relative... He hunched his shoulders to take up less space, and hid his blanket roll behind his back.

Peck drew in a breath, and then he caught it, and from behind the ironworks Reuben could hear the rustle of clothing and the even thud of officious footsteps. The glow of a night lantern rounded the brick-built corner of the workshop.

"Bummer!" hissed Peck. Then he added, "Sorry," slapped one muddy palm over Reuben's mouth, swept his feet from under him, and dropped them both down into the bottom of the ditch. He had, chivalrously, taken the lower part, which meant he was the one with his ass in standing water. 

Reuben, biting his tongue behind Peck's wet and muddy palm, took that chivalry very kind indeed. It was only at that point, perched bony and uncomfortable on Peck's equally bony and lankier frame, that he had time to reassess: Peck's accent was unfamiliar and his actions as suspect as Reuben's own. They were, mutually, hiding their activities from the night watch. Q.E.D., Peck himself had something to hide, and therefore was unlikely to betray Reuben's own activities. 

Deliberately, Reuben relaxed, and attempted to convey by non-verbal co-operation that he too had absolutely no desire to attract the attention of the night watchmen, the Confederate Army, or the whipping post. Peck did not take advantage of this co-operation, which, conversely, suggested to Reuben that he was in good hands. He drew breath as quietly as possible, through his nose, and tracked the footsteps of the watch as they circled the building.

" - damn these cloudy nights. Always make me think McClelland is just up the river."

There's a snort. "McClellend and whose army? Them Yankees are cowards to a man. Not a one of them willing to stand and fight. Our boys'll send them home with their tails between their legs, you mark my words."

"God with us," said the first guard. 

He brushed through the undergrowth on top of the ditch, the lantern-light making a horizon of the nettles and long grass. Reuben froze, holding his breath. The footsteps stopped: the guard unbuttoned, sighed, and pissed. 

Peck heaved with suppressed laughter. Reuben, aware that to do so might seal his fate, slapped his own palm over Peck's mouth. They were as intertwined as - men forced together by circumstances. By a guard with a bladder the size of a stock-pot. There was nothing remotely amusing about what would happen if they were discovered. Reuben, fiercely, wished all white men to the devil, and especially the two - three? - within reach. Two, at least, at last, finally, took themselves and their flacid, fish-belly penises out of sight and hearing.

"Thanks," Peck said, raising his hands.

Reuben said, "Much ob-", and then the side of the ditch was nearer than he though it was, and his back rubbed up against the stone revetting, and he could not hide his painful gasp.

"Hey," Peck said. "Hey, stranger. What's up?"

Never admit weakness. Reuben rolled himself to his knees, and then tried for his feet. He wobbled, but attained verticality via clenched teeth. The pain would fade. It always did. 

"Much obliged," he managed. He took a step forward. His knees buckled.

"Whoa," said Peck, and caught him. 

It would be a mistake to say that the world went black, for the world was already black. Reuben found himself noting, for one absent moment, that Peck's pale eyes were a very odd shape, slitted, as if he was wearing a mask, and then unconsciousness slammed down with all the might of hammer on anvil. 

He woke up on a ship. 

He woke up face-down on a horse-hair pallet on a ship's bunk, which he discerned by the feel of the stuffed cotton under his bare knees and elbows, for he appeared reduced to his drawers, and by the creak and sway of the bunk, minus the sound of hooves and plus the rattle of ropes and the shouts of the crew. "Heave up that mains'il!" was, he felt, diagnostic, despite the fact that Reuben's sole experience of maritime affairs was through the tales of Walter Scott, which the master required his daughters read to him after dinner. 

Of them all, it was almost certainly Reuben, in his post outside the door, who had paid most attention, enchanted by a world of chivalry and pageant. To date, his own adventures had been even handed; caught calling on Jeremiah - his thoughts stumbled - whipped; caught running, woke up in bed, with his back under a cool compress, undoubtedly on his way... somewhere. 

"Loudoun," said Peck.

With some effort, Reuben turned his head. He could see his own blanket roll, muddied and intact, which meant that his five silver guineas and stack of Confederate dollars might be still hidden in its folds. Beyond it, white-washed planks, a small porthole, and Peck, folded into a space between bunk and basin which was not designed for a man of his height, nor his breadth of hat, which he was still wearing, alongside a scarlet mask with a twisted cotton fringe. Reuben had never seen such a thing before in his life, although just as Sir Walter Scott had suggested that the naked confederate patriotism displayed by his master was indeed a mask for other and more mercenary feelings, so he could not but hope that under this concealment lived compassion. 

"Your first safe house. And then Canada," said Peck. 

He could not have dreamt so much. Hope, painfully, seized his heart. 

"I trust that was your eventual destination," said Peck, gently. Then he tipped his hat, and said, "Peck. Orville Peck, at your service."

"Likewise," Reuben choked out. "Reuben." He managed, "Thank you." 

"Spare your thanks for Captain Bennett," said Peck. "He expected one fugitive, not two. And it is he that will see you on your way. He will see you safe, too, for he is of the Quaker persuasion and you are, I think, not the first he has set on this road. I do not wish to discount your own actions in this direction, but a friendly hand never went amiss." 

His voice was kind, and amused. Reuben, who had learned early and hard to pay attention as much to tone as to words, considered innuendo, caught the glint in Peck's eyes behind the mask, and confirmed it, which was a jolt to his own world view and no mistake. He knew full well he was not the only black man who preferred his own sex, but he had kept Jeremiah free from the whipping post so far, and would not risk him now. Only a fool confided across the lines. 

Yet, it was a hard road to travel alone, when he had planned for two.

"What is it?" Peck said.

"Merely...I wish for the world to be a fairer place than it is," Reuben said.

Behind the mask, Peck's eyes dropped. He said, "We still try," and, then, he put down his book and stood up, which was not easy in a cabin half a foot shorter than himself, and said, "There is stew, and biscuit, and if I am hungry you must be famished. I'll bring supplies." He hesitated, in the doorway. "You must have left family behind. I am sorry for it."

Reuben said nothing.

Peck said, "There is a couple of days until I must go. If you can bring yourself to trust me in that time, it is my role to carry letters to people who read in secret, from people who write in code." 

"Save your charity," said Reuben. "I can neither read nor write."

Peck glanced up. The fringe of his mask swayed with the movement, so that for a second Reuben glimpsed his unshaven chin, and the pink of his mouth. Peck was younger than he had imagined.

"I can learn," Reuben offered, and then, "I should like - I should very much like to learn."

"Yeah?" said Peck. Then he said, "I cannot but feel there are other ways to traverse Richmond unseen, and you know them. Might we, thus, trade?"

"Yes," said Reuben. "Yes."

And so, he taught Orville Peck the hidden routes of Richmond, and spelled out his first read words from Peck's Ivanhoe, although it was the Quakers who taught him the art of writing, moving from one safe house to another. It was six months later when he sent his first letter, and a year later - a year later, when only stubborn pride insisted he still trust in a reply, his answer had arrived. Six foot of it, free, alive, and smiling. 

Freedom does look good on a man.


End file.
